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I started WritingTime on Typepad eight years ago with the help and insistence of my daughter Brooke who said if I was a writer I had to have a blog. My early readers were coerced students, about 18 of them, and some of my first posts came from my just published book, Courage & Craft. It was all strictly business, all about writing, but then I began including my own trials and tribulations of being a working writer. And then my husband had a heart attack and quadruple bypass and I wrote about that too, and things got much more personal.

When my horse died and I wrote what it felt like to lose him, one of my readers, Dr. Robert Goldman, wrote in a comment that there should be a book by writers about losing an animal. And that was the beginning of Cherished:21 Writers on Animals They’ve Love and Lost. (Dr. G., friend, student and my animal’s vet, wrote the Preface for it.)

Along the way I discovered I really loved writing short pieces about the craft of writing and my writing life and my fourteenth book, A Year of Writing Dangerously, came out of that love and the practice I had writing this blog.

I’ll continue going on and on about the writing life but I’m going to do it now on my website, www.BarbaraAbercrombie.com In eight years there’s been a huge difference in website/blog hosting and I’m moving to WordPress because I can figure out the technical stuff so easily on it. (Has anyone noticed that the books on my bedside table in this sidebar haven’t changed in eight years? I never could figure out how to do it.) I’ve also had problems with the comment section being closed.

So onward. Please come subscribe again to WritingTime on my website. All the old posts have been moved over to it, thanks to Rob Daly.

And thank you, dear readers for your loyalty to this blog and your wonderful comments over the years. Please stay tuned. And keep writing.

The UCLA Extension Writers Studio started last Thursday and ended last night (it goes from 10:00 to 6:00 every day.) It's intense and exciting to teach and such great people show up to take the workshops. I taught a workshop called "Courage & Craft" which covered both non-fiction and fiction, and I'm missing my students today. (I'll be doing a very mini-version of it at Book Passage on March 1st. Please come if you live in the San Francisco area.)

My speaker this year was Mark Salzman who inspired everybody with a talk about getting through the anxiety of writer block – a talk that I and all my students wish he'd turn into a book. We couldn't take notes fast enough. Read his latest book, The Man in the Empty Boat, a memoir about his own case of writers block, and also his novels. He's not only a great writer but also generous, kind and very funny.

PS: If you've been trying that link in my last post to the UCLA Conference Center in Lake Arrowhead, I apologize. I can't make it work either. Just Google the Center and it'll come up.

My annual Lake Arrowhead Writers Retreat is a private weekend workshop and retreat for all writers - those with work in progress as well as those looking for a nurturing environment in which to jumpstart their writing. It's held at the UCLA Conference Center in the beautiful mountain town of Lake Arrowhead, California (less than 100 miles from Los Angeles), and begins at 1:00 on Friday, May 2nd, 2014 and lasts until after lunch on Sunday May 4th. Enrollment is limited.

The price of $775.00 includes the workshop, two nights in a shared condolet at the Conference Center (with beds on separate floors and two private baths) three-course dinners with wine, buffet lunches and breakfasts, and tips provided for the staff. If you want to exercise, there's a fitness room, Jacuzzi, hiking trails, pool and tennis courts. You can check out more information about the Conference Center and layout of rooms at:uclaconferencecenter.com

During the retreat there will be discussions of craft, inspiration for writers, recommended books, marketing tips and a workshop for feedback on your writing. Plus time to write on your own.

If you're interested please contact me through my website: www.BarbaraAbercrombie.com and I'll send you information about how to sign up.

I'm reading Ann Patchett's collection of essays This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, and I'm going slowly because I don't want it to end. I'm also discussing it in my UCLA Writer's Studio workshop next week so I'm underlining and marking pages like crazy. Her essay "The Getaway Car" is one of the best pieces, and most true, I've ever read about writing and becoming a writer. What shines through all the essays is her generosity, as a person and as a writer. And her work ethic. Read it and get inspired.

You can order the e-book version of "The Getaway Car" for just $2.99 on Amazon. (The best bargain you'll ever hear of.) But trust me, the whole collection is worth buying. And if you haven't read her novel Bel Canto, do so immediately.

I'm also reading Mark Salzman's novel, Lying Awake for the second time. (This book is the reason I became his devoted fan.) It's about a nun living in a monastery in present-day Los Angeles who has visions that allow her to write with great devotion and success, but her visions are accompanied by devastating headaches and she ultimately faces a terrible choice. Read this novel, not only as a riveting and compelling read, but also to study how simple beautiful prose can be. Those of you coming to the Writers Studio next week will meet and hear Mark in person. (The class is full but usually someone has to drop out so if you're interested get on the waiting list. It's worth it just to hear Mark in person!)

I finally finished The Goldfinch. Almost 800 pages of it. I was less in love with the book when it turned into a thriller three quarters of the way through, but still very glad to have read it and in awe of Donna Tartt.

We're home after a quick wonderful visit to Purdue University in Indiana, where the weather was freezing (and I mean freezing) but the reception couldn't have been warmer. R. gave a talk at the celebration for Dr. Arvind Raman becoming the Robert V. Adams Professor of Electrical Engineering. All of Arvind's family was there, including his father from India and his brother from England, and afterward we all went out for a delicious family Indian dinner.

So I've been thinking about home a lot; how L.A. is home and how it felt looking out the plane window as we headed west Saturday night, watching that line of light as we chased the setting sun. How it feels to go away and then return home. This is one of our major themes as writers, home and landscape and belonging.

(Two writing exercises: Write about a time you left home, how it felt. Then how it felt to return or not to return. If you're writing fiction give this to your main character.)

A student of mine, Wendy Kennar, keeps writing, sending stuff out and getting her essays published. The latest one was in last Saturday's L.A. Times "L.A. Affairs". It's the lovely story of growing up, falling in love, getting married and continuing to live in the same zip code. Some of you out there in the midwest might be going 'what's the big deal?' but let me tell you, this is rare not to mention refreshing in Los Angeles. Here's the link, check it out. http://www.latimes.com/home/laaffairs/la-hm-0125-affairs-20140125,0,7055932.story#axzz2rL7fSHGb

On MLK Day there's this skinny kid with his drums in the parking lot next to our house, facing the ocean and the about-to-set sun, drummng his heart out. It's wonderful - loud and full of life and making a lot of the neighbors crazy. On the other side of the parking lot is a van, the kind our friends had in the '70's, belonging to a bunch of women having a day at the beach and smoking a wee bit of something fragrant. And one parking lot to the north there's this rooster running loose who salutes the dawn every morning with total joy. I'm loving all this and thinking there's a poem in it. But instead of a poem I'm writing this blog post and giving you the details for a poem of your own.

I'm celebrating! I just finished the essay I was grumbling and fretting and trying to keep calm about a few posts ago. (It'll be in an anthology about faith edited by Victoria Zackheim and published next year by Simon and Schuster.)

You go through such doubt and chaos before you find what you're really writing about in an essay - or in a novel, or a poem, or whatever it is you're writing. Or at least I do. And you just have to get on with it and write no matter how hard or awful it is. And then, more often than not, one day all the dots start connecting, and you see what you're really writing about and how it all comes together. And you realize why it is you write, and how lucky you are to do it, and you run around feeling fabulous – until you get another idea to write about and then it starts all over again.

A beautiful quote from a poem by Marge Piercy: The pitcher cries for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.

There is no work more real than writing.

*

The UCLA Extension's Writers Studio is coming up next month. Four days of boot camp for writers, ten courses, some on film, others on novels and memoir. My course is called "Courage and Craft" and there's one space left. Here's my official brochure description of it:

“My job is to help you discover your stories and then get you out of your own way so you can transform those stories into fiction or non-fiction. I also give some practical guidelines for craft and create an atmosphere where students can feel safe to write the truth of their lives or feel free to create a fictional reality. There’s nothing until there’s something on the page, so there’s a lot of writing in my workshops. I love doing this in the intense four days of the Writers Studio. There’s such energy, focus, and camaraderie. Four days devoted to your writing can give you the tools and momentum to finish your book or your essays, and also the chance to become part of a lively and connected writing community.”

For more information please get in touch with the Writers' Program at UCLA Extension.

Happy New Year, dear readers. If you're a subscriber and received dozens of of posts you'd already read, please accept my apologies. We were transferring the posts to my website, www.BarbaraAbercrombie.com and they flew out like birds, landing everywhere.

2014! You have a whole new year in which to write dangerously. (And if you read Korean, A Year of Writing Dangerously has just been published in Korea. I find it hilarious that they put my photo on the cover.) Have you made a list of resolutions for your writing? It's a good idea. We tend to accomplish what we write down. Will you write the first draft of a novel? The final draft? Or a memoir? A bunch of essays? Poems, a book for kids or simply start a journal? Make your list specific. But be gentle with yourself. Getting something written often means getting started over and over and over.

PS If you read English, not Korean, A Year of Writing Dangerously is available through Amazon or your local bookstores. If you're facing a wall of writer's block, there's Kicking in the Wall. And if you just don't want to write, come to my new cooking blog, www.TheIntimidatedCook.com and give a dinner party for your friends.

You know those Christmas card pictures with three generations of family all dressed in coordinated clothes and standing in some beautiful spot looking relaxed? This is not one of them. This is my family (one grandson and a boyfriend missing) just before Thanksgiving dinner and if I look a little crazed it's cause there's a 21 pound turkey in the oven and I just decided we had to have a picture taken. (I'm holding Nelson but unfortuately he doesn't show up against black sweaters.)

Have a lovely holiday, dear readers. Be lazy, eat whatever looks good, sit in front of a warm fire if the weather is cold, love your friends and family, and try to find all the time you can to read.

If you know me you might be thinking that cooking is a hilarious subject for me to write about since I am not a cook, know nothing about it, and up until now did just about anything to stay out of the kitchen. I've cooked one company dinner for the past decade, over and over and over again, Writer's Chicken (the recipe posted on this blog years ago). But the thing is I love having my friends and family over and one day I just got tired of always wondering what to serve and feeling intimidated about my cooking. So I decided to find some very easy, delicious recipes and never worry about what to serve again. And as I always tell my students, you write the book (or blog) that you need to read.

My family and close friends rolled their eyes when I announced this new project a few months ago. Though R. is really, really enjoying the whole thing. (The dear man has eaten Writers Chicken, salad with tuna on top, and pasta for more dinners than I'd care to say.)

What I want to do in the future is to turn this into a cookbook and I'm hoping the blog will gather enough readers to get a publisher interested. So please send the link on to any friends you think might be interested. And please! sign up to subscribe. I'll be posting a new recipe every week. And I'd love comments and any ideas for new recipes.

With thanks to Rob Daly for all the hours and talent he put into the design of the website, all the friends who had experimental dinners at my house for the past few months and rated my meals, Myna Dyer Skinner for helping me figure out the subtitle and for the enthusiasm of a lot of friends and students for this idea. With love and gratitude - xxoo Barbara

Here's the thing about writing an essay, or a novel or a memoir – each time you do it you learn how to do it all over again. At least I have to. I'm writing an essay now that's due in January for an anthology on faith. Ever since I signed the contract for this essay I've been alternating between, Why did I ever agree to do this and could I possibly get out of it? and How very lucky I am to have someone ask me to write an essay.

So what I've been doing for the past month is jotting down little disconnected paragraphs in a folder called "Faith Essay". And as I clutch my head over my inability to write a coherent first draft, I remember that this is how I always do it. I write down random bits for a few weeks or a month or however long I have, and eventually I read it over and realize what I'm trying to say. And then I struggle through a truly awful first draft trying to put everything together. Eventually I have an essay.

I know (or imagine) there are writers out there who can do this in a much more calm and elegant manner, fully confident as they turn out an essay. But I'm not one of them. And I keep coming back to the realization that this is simply the way I write, full of false starts, bits and pieces and doubts. This is my process.

Think about your own process in writing and try making friends with it. It never gets easier, folks.